Reporting on People Who ‘Don’t Exist’

One afternoon in early April, I was in my kitchen in Moscow, talking on the phone with the spokesman for Ramzan A. Kadyrov, the pro-Kremlin leader of Russia’s Chechen Republic, about a report that its security services had been arresting and torturing gay men.

The details of the story broken by the Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta — that security agents were luring victims by posing online as gay men looking for dates — were worrying enough. But rights groups, suggesting that the crackdown was a populist move by Mr. Kadyrov to appeal to religious conservatives, were also pointing alarmingly to the official denial.

The spokesman, Alvi Karimov, had been asserting that the authorities could not be arresting gay men because gay men did not exist in Chechnya. “I said before, and I repeat now, in Chechnya we just don’t have this problem,” Mr. Karimov told me.

I asked if he was certain that in all of Chechnya not one man was gay. He found the question “strange,” but said that he was certain, and hence the report in Novaya Gazeta was fabricated.

Chechnya, a tiny picturesque region in the Caucasus Mountains that fought and lost two wars for independence from Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is largely pacified today. But Mr. Kadyrov has an iron grip on the republic.

I doubted I would be able to find gay men to speak with in Chechnya, since they would probably be in jail or in hiding; and even if I did find them, I would be putting them in danger by arranging a meeting.

Still, the local government’s assertion that Chechnya is a region without gays suggested that attitudes toward homosexuality there would be important enough in and of themselves to warrant a trip. Soon enough, I was on a flight heading south to Grozny, the Chechen capital, which in Russian translates as “Terrible.”

I went to the office of Heda Saratova, who represents the local government on matters of human rights. “I never saw them with my own eyes,” Ms. Saratova said of gay men. “And I never heard of them. I never thought of them. In my 50 years, I have never seen a gay man.”

She went further: “I see flies, I see mosquitoes, but I have never seen a gay man.”

A man with whom I struck up a conversation said that he opposed the crackdown on gay men, but also knew no gays. He did not want his name used in the context of an article about gay men. “Under Islam, lying with a man is a sin,” he said. “People don’t approve of homosexuals here in Chechnya. If anybody tries to start a gay movement here, they will be killed.”

Strangely, the city’s appearance that evening seemed untouched by such ugliness. After the war, Russia poured oil money into Chechnya, repairing every street and building in Grozny. The sun set through a curtain of pink clouds, illuminating the capital in a soft light. Neon twinkled on the new skyscrapers. The Islamic call to prayer echoed over the city. People were out strolling the sidewalks.

I met an old friend at a coffee shop to hear about Grozny’s night life. While gay men were never openly affectionate in the city, before the crackdown there were closeted communities there.

A week or so later, outside Chechnya, I reported on the arrests with the help of a St. Petersburg-based gay rights group, the Russian LGBT Network, and visited a safe house for gay Chechen men fleeing abuse.

One of these men, Ilya, described how he met dates online in chat rooms for Chechen gays. A post to one of these chat rooms — which had names like The Village and What the Mountains Are Silent About — also connected him with the LGBT Network.

Ilya let me touch his cheek, to feel the titanium screws a doctor had put in to repair a jawbone broken in a beating.

He showed me on his phone what he had written when he was seeking help: “Hello, good evening. I am writing about the post in The Village. I live in the Caucasus and think that soon it will end for me, as it did for my brothers.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A2 of the New York edition with the headline: Reporting on Gays Who ‘Don’t Exist’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe